The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible eBook

When then the early Christians became satisfied that
Jesus was the Messiah, it followed of necessity that
they should after his death, say to themselves—­“He
has gone into the heavens to receive his institution
into the office he has won by his sinless life and
suffering death. He will come again in the clouds
with power; the conquering Messiah.”

This belief seems to have taken shape first in Paul’s
fervid mind. His earlier epistles were full of
it. His converts became unsettled by it, and
in their excited expectation of the return of the Messiah
they neglected their earthly duties; and Paul had
to caution them against this impatience and cool their
heated minds.

This and other experiences sobered Paul’s own
mind. He found that as year after year came round
the Messiah did not return. In the rapid ripening
of thought which went on in the tropical climate of
his soul, he grew into a more spiritual apprehension
of Christ. If you read his undoubted letters
in the order of their writing; First Thessalonians,
First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, etc.,
you will note a steady decrease of reference to this
topic, until it fades away into a vague vision of the
dawning day of God; the absolute assurance that Christ
would conquer and rule the earth, though it might
be in the spirit and not in the flesh; the certain
conviction of a good time coming though beyond his
ken. The later light of the apostle corrected
his earlier misapprehensions; and would correct our
crude and carnal notions of the second coming of Christ,
if we would only study Paul, as we study Turner or
Shakespeare, in his ripening ‘periods.’

Were this one principle followed, our popular theology
would soon reconstruct itself.

V.

It is a wrong use of the Bible to cite its authors
as of equal authority, even in the spheres of theology
and religion.

The teachings of any human writing come clothed with
such authority as the author’s name lends to
it or its intrinsic force wins for it.

If in the work of an obscure economic writer, of no
perceptible ability, you come upon the theory that
the land of a people belongs to the people; that its
passing into the absolute ownership of private persons
is the basic evil of our civilization; that the nation
must resume the inalienable rights of the people at
large, in the resources of all wealth, and regulate
the individual usufruct of land in the interests of
the entire body politic—­you will probably
toss the book contemptuously from you as the crazy
lucubration of a fool.